The idea that Jack Kerouac is a great American writer and that On the Road is a great American novel has been an on going and relentless and relentless hard sell by his publishers and those who own the copyrights on his books ever since I can remember, certainly since I first encountered his name in high school. One read the books one was supposed to in one’s teens—Slaughterhouse 5, Steppenwolfe, Naked Lunch—and however much one might have changed their estimation of their youthful heroes, one was also expected to hold their first opinion of Kerouac and his particular book for all the time. One only grew to love it more over the decades, so the gestalt went, and it was unthinkable that a literate person from the boomer generation would have less than glorious things to say about Kerouac and the revolution he inspired. But all this is too much, and enough already. I never liked the novel, I never cared for Kerouac, although I lied that I liked him in deference to peer pressure and the prospects of scoring with hip young girls I wanted to bed, but it was a lie extracting a cost, and now I say that one might write an article of those who didn’t care for Kerouac, thought him a mediocre scribe, a balled-up novelist, an indulgent alkie putz you crossed the street if you coming toward you.

On the Road by Jack Kerouac was a book I detested when I read in high school, and it remains the most over rated book by an American writer I've encountered. There are moments of real poetry here, yes, but the waxing and waning in dated and contrived hip argot was embarrassing to read through.

It was during a bloody argument about merits of Jack Kerouac's writing when the woman I was arguing with,a twenty five year old who planned to be a penniless , wine drinking mooch like her hero Jack told me
You know Ted, your very extreme opinion of him stinks of jealousy.

I have no reason to be jealous of a man who drank himself to death before the age of fifty while living with his mother. It is impossible to be jealous of a man who wrote so poorly. The truth is that after spending nearly
twenty years trying to accommodate Kerouac's work with by reading many of his books and a good many biographies and secondary sources about he and his fellow beats, I admitted to my innermost self that my gut instinct was right, Jack wasn't a good writer and that his continued popularity has more to do with a cultist hype that surrounds the work and persona of Ayn Rand; there's an invested interest in making sure that the author is always spoken of in the most regaling terms.

Others like me, cursed with literature degrees, broad readings and an appreciation of craft in the service of real inspiration, regale him far less, finding his writings charmless, undercooked, ill-prepared, all sizzle and no steak. Those willing to say that Kerouac's oeuvre was wholesale bullshit are in the minority, as the Jack Kerouac Industry shows no sign of slowing down. Every smoke stack is fired up, and what might have been clear skies are blackened all the more with his loopy circumlocutions.